


Rouge

by cuubism



Series: sky colors [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Depression, Domesticity, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Insecurity, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mention of Past Suicide Attempt, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuubism/pseuds/cuubism
Summary: Shadowhunters are not made for precious things. Their spaces and belongings are built of violence: if Alec punches a wall in the Institute he’ll only break his hand, he could hurl his bow across the training room with all his strength and it wouldn’t snap.Shadowhunter hands are not made to handle precious things, but Magnus is the most fragile strong thing in the world, so Alec’s determined to learn.a sequel, of sorts, toViolet
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: sky colors [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848601
Comments: 34
Kudos: 303
Collections: Hunter's Moon Fic Recs





	Rouge

**Author's Note:**

> sequel (but takes place a few months in the future) to [Violet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23870863), but can be read alone
> 
> this fic is not nearly as heavy as Violet, but it does show depression and reference past suicide attempts, so keep that in mind!

Magnus has a tendency to leave his coffee mugs everywhere. Alec often finds them around the loft, the dregs of the coffee long since cold, rings of condensation soaking into the nice furniture. It could have been an annoying habit, but Alec mostly finds it endearing, that Magnus gets so caught up in his thoughts and projects that he forgets about the mugs he’s literally drinking from, even though he only has to snap his fingers to banish them to the sink.

Alec’s certain there are at least _three_ half-finished drinks on various tables around the loft, even as Magnus pokes his head into the kitchen and asks, “Is that coffee you’re making?”

Alec regards him with a smile as he points to the mugs sitting on the island. “You have two in progress, you know.”

Magnus frowns at them. “Oh. I forgot.”

He starts to reach for them, but Alec places a fresh cup in front of him before he can pick one up and, Angel forbid, _drink_ it.

Magnus beams at him, cradling the warm mug in his heavily-ringed fingers. Alec still doesn’t know why Magnus wears so much jewelry when he’s just hanging around the house, but he won’t complain when it makes every flutter of his fingers look so ethereal.

“Thank you, darling,” Magnus says, and disappears with his prize, _again_ forgetting to snap his half-drunk mugs into the sink.

Shaking his head, Alec laughs to himself and puts them away.

*

He would have thought it would bother him, the clutter and chaos of Magnus’s loft. But it doesn’t. Alec was raised in precise order and adopted it as his own—rules are necessary for safety in demon hunting, after all.

It wasn’t until he let a certain warlock crash into his life that Alec began to think that order might not be quite as intrinsic to his being as he’d once thought. That what was a comfort and a tool in moderation had become a straitjacket.

Alec loves the organized chaos of the loft, how it breaks every rule he grew up with—'put things away when you’re done with them,' 'things should be utilitarian before all else,' 'don’t spoil yourself or live in excess'—and still somehow circles around to being a haven, a space of peace where Alec doesn’t have to worry about treading right through a glass floor.

Magnus has decided he wants to redecorate it. Or at least, in his words, 'rearrange it.'

“The place needs a new energy,” he'd said.

He’d asked for Alec’s opinion, but Alec didn’t much care what Magnus did with the loft, so long as it was Magnus who did it. Alec doesn’t really know anything about interior decorating, after all, he just likes living amidst the remnants of Magnus’s touch.

So when Alec comes home from the Institute, the place is in an uproar—furniture shoved aside, paintings leaning against the wall, rugs and tapestries rolled up, books in chaotic stacks on every available surface. Magnus stands in the middle of it all, fingertips sparking, deep in thought as he tries to figure out how to put this back together now that he’s taken it all apart.

It makes Alec smile, that Magnus had decided he wanted to redecorate and had just—jumped right in, without even planning what he was going to redecorate _to._

“You have time for a break?” Alec asks, lifting the box in his hands. “I brought pizza.”

Magnus looks up at him and smiles. “My hero! From the place down the street?”

“Yup, your favorite.”

Magnus spins in place, fingers twitching. Then he frowns. “Oh no. I seem to have misplaced the kitchen table.” He examines the loft further. “…And the chairs.”

They end up sitting on the floor amidst the wreckage, plates cradled in their laps. Magnus stretches one leg out to prod at Alec’s thigh, and Alec lays his free hand on his ankle. The silk of Magnus’s lounge pants feels smooth and cool over the hard bone of his leg.

“So, is this our living room now?” Alec asks him, raising a playful eyebrow. “You’re going for a sort of post-explosion aesthetic?”

One day he’ll manage to catch Magnus off guard with his teasing, but it’s not today. Without missing a beat Magnus replies, “Just trying to externalize how you make my heart feel, darling.”

And it’s all Alec can do to swallow his bite of pizza without choking on it.

Magnus takes a sip of his drink, a smile playing on his lips. But then his expression turns slightly hesitant.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “it’ll be back to normal in a few days.”

Alec scoots across the floor to press up against him, thigh to thigh. “It’s okay. Take as much time as you want.”

Magnus’s expression eases.

As soon as Alec sees it, he nudges him with his elbow. “Wouldn’t want to interrupt the _creative process_ , would we?”

“Hey!” Magnus banishes his drink and both of their plates to the sink and climbs unceremoniously into Alec’s lap, poking him in the chest. “I’ll show you _the creative process_.”

“I have literally no idea what that’s supposed to mean.”

Magnus leans in slowly and presses his lips to Alec’s jaw. “I think you do,” he murmurs.

Alec knows what he’d _like_ it to mean.

He takes gentle hold of Magnus’s chin and tilts his face up so he can kiss him. Magnus tastes slightly sweet, like whatever he was drinking, and Alec loves it, loves the weight of him on his thighs, the heat of his body, the way the warm lights of the loft catch in his hair.

He is so incredibly precious, and Alec still doesn’t know how he’s allowed to have him.

*

Shadowhunters are not made for precious things. Their spaces and belongings are built of violence: if Alec punches a wall in the Institute he’ll only break his hand, he could hurl his bow across the training room with all his strength and it wouldn’t snap.

Shadowhunter hands are not made to handle precious things, but Magnus is the most fragile strong thing in the world, so Alec’s determined to learn.

“Am I hurting you?”

Magnus shakes his head, but his face is scrunched up in pain. He had stumbled out of a portal and into the living room late that night, bleeding from his stomach after a client meeting that had ‘gone wrong.’ Alec thinks that if he ever learns exactly how it 'went wrong,' someone out there will end up sporting an identical wound to Magnus’s.

Alec presses more gauze to the wound to stem the bleeding. Magnus assures him that his magic will recover enough overnight for him to heal it himself in the morning, but for now, they’re left with the Mundane way.

Magnus is shaking, and Alec hates himself when he says, “Try to lie still.”

Alec wishes he were gentler. He wishes every brush of his fingertips didn’t make Magnus flinch. He wishes he were raised to care instead of just to kill. He wishes he wishes he wishes.

“I’m sorry,” he says as he tapes off the bandage and removes his hands from Magnus’s trembling form. He’s done enough. “I’m sorry I’m hurting you.”

“ _You’re_ not hurting me,” Magnus insists. “The wound is hurting me. You’re making it better. Kiss it for me?”

As requested, Alec leans down to kiss the top of the bandage. Magnus shivers under his touch.

“Thank you, darling. Now, I suppose I should be off to bed. Join me?”

Alec nods. “In a minute.”

Magnus heads off, clearly still exhausted, and Alec cleans the blood from the couch cushions, staring at the way it soaks into the washcloth. Magnus’s blood.

He stares at his hands, at the roughness of them, thinks of Magnus shaking under their touch. He feels sort of ill.

But eventually, he gets up and follows Magnus to bed.

Alec doesn’t sleep. At some point in the night, he feels Magnus partially wake beside him and shift over so he can curl against Alec’s side. Without thinking about it, Alec moves away.

Then Magnus wakes up fully.

“Alexander?” he calls. “Is something wrong?”

Alec takes a shaky breath. “I don’t—” he tries to say. Sucks in another breath. Continues. “I don’t… know… how to do this.”

He can feel Magnus frowning. “How to do what?”

_How to hold you like the most precious thing that you are. How to make sure you’re safe in my hands._ “How to not— _hurt_ you.”

“Hurt me? You’ve never hurt me. I’ve never been afraid that you’ll hurt me.” A pause. “Are _you_ afraid that you’ll hurt me?”

“No! I just—” Alec squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them again, the bedroom is just as dark as it was behind his eyelids. “—it’s all I know how to do.”

A long pause, and then, “I don’t understand.” Magnus sounds truly apologetic about it. “Can you try again?"

No one’s ever really asked Alec to elaborate on how he feels before. He’s not sure he knows how to do it. “Shadowhunters— we’re only taught how to kill. And I don’t want to do that anymore, I want to— _hold you_ , like you deserve—and I don’t know if my hands are capable of it.”

Magnus shifts closer then, pressing himself up along the line of Alec’s body, his skin warm in the cool darkness. Alec aches for his touch. “Oh, my darling,” Magnus says, “please don’t say that about yourself. You have the gentlest hands. I always want you to hold me.”

“But I haven’t—”

Magnus places a finger over his lips. “You don’t have to be taught it. It’s already who you are. I could see it in the way you held me when we first met. I can see it in the way you look at me. When I’m hurting, your touch comforts me. It doesn’t matter how you’ve been trained, your hands could never hurt me.”

As if to prove it, Magnus raises one of Alec’s hands to his lips and kisses his knuckles.

Alec pulls him to his chest, needing the weight of his body against his, needing to crush him in his arms. Magnus hums and lets himself be held, nuzzling into Alec’s collarbone. His breath is hot, his hair soft where Alec tangles his fingers in it, and Alec thinks, _I love you,_ and also, _if you’re right, and I_ am _gentle, then the purpose of it is this: to cradle you between my hands, to protect you, and in doing so, to let you protect me._

*

It’s just past dawn when Alec gets back from a late patrol, the sun breaking in red streaks over the skyline. When he slips through the doorway, the loft is quiet and dark, which isn’t unusual for the early hour. But something about the quiet strikes him as wrong.

Nerves coiling in his chest, Alec makes his way to the bedroom, where he finds Magnus curled up around his pillow. Somehow, Alec can tell he’s awake.

He crouches in front of him and lays a hand on Magnus’s blanketed shoulder. “Hey.” He keeps his voice soft, hushed in the tenuous dark. “You awake?”

Magnus nods, but scrunches his eyes shut tighter like he doesn’t want to think about it.

“Having a bad day?”

Another nod. Alec rubs his palm up and down Magnus’s arm, heart squeezing in sympathetic pain.

“You wanna stay home today? I’ll stay with you.”

“Can’t.” Magnus’s voice is hoarse. He doesn’t open his eyes. “I have a client in an hour. S’important. Can’t be rescheduled.”

“Okay. Let me just get changed out of this gear and I’ll come join you until you have to get up.”

Alec silently thanks the Angel that the patrol was uneventful and he isn’t covered in ichor or some other disgusting substance. He quickly strips and pulls on a t-shirt and sweatpants and crawls into bed behind Magnus, wrapping an arm around him.

Magnus turns in his arms and tucks his face into Alec’s neck. His nose is cold, as are his hands when he slips them under Alec’s shirt to press against his chest. Alec wraps his arms tighter around him.

“You should sleep,” Magnus whispers. “You’ve been out all night.”

“Nah, I’m okay.”

He does end up dozing a bit as the sun keeps rising and warm red sunlight spills into the bedroom. Magnus stays curled against his chest, still where he would normally be shifting about and waking Alec up in his attempts to get comfortable, and it’s a little unnerving, but as long as Magnus is in his arms, Alec figures it’s okay.

Far too soon, Magnus’s phone buzzes, indicating it’s time to get up.

“Magnus.” Alec runs a hand through his hair, guilt stirring in him even though it was Magnus himself who insisted he had to take this client. He wouldn’t have done that when he was feeling this way if it wasn’t truly important.

Magnus whimpers against his throat, and Alec almost can’t bring himself to make him get up.

But he has to. So he slides out of bed and pulls Magnus upright so he’s sitting on the edge of the mattress.

“Come on, I’ll help you get ready.”

He passes Magnus a shirt and Magnus mechanically pulls off his sweater and slides his arms into the shirtsleeves, staring at his toes. They’re painted pink, but the nail polish is getting chipped. “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he murmurs.

“You don’t have to do anything to deserve me, you just have to exist,” Alec tells him. He passes Magnus his pants, and Magnus pulls them on. Alec crouches between his knees to slip his socks and boots onto his feet and tie the laces. “But to answer your question: you’re the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met. You’re incredibly powerful, but you only ever use it to help people. You’re literally getting out of bed despite not feeling well _right now_ just because you want to help someone. Also, you save my life every day just by being here.”

Magnus blinks at him tiredly. “I’m not powerful,” he says. It sounds like a plea. “I’m falling apart.”

“Just for today,” Alec says. “We’ll put you back together tomorrow, okay?”

Magnus cups his cheek and finally offers him a pained smile.

Alec slips away to rummage in the bathroom and returns with Magnus’s hair gel, which he uses to spike Magnus’s hair in soft swoops. Magnus leans into the touch, humming.

Alec’s watched Magnus’s morning routine enough times to have it down pat, even if today it’ll have to be a bit abridged. He washes Magnus’s face with a damp cloth, then rubs his favorite moisturizer into his skin in soft swirling motions. Magnus lets Alec cradle his face without moving, without commenting, taking Alec’s energy where it’s offered and conserving his own.

When Alec pulls out his makeup bag, Magnus raises an eyebrow. “Do you even know how to do that?”

“I’ve watched you,” Alec says. “I’m a quick learner, and I have a steady hand.”

“Mmm, that you do,” Magnus teases, but it’s half-hearted.

The amount of makeup Magnus wears varies a lot depending on the day and his outfit. Today, Alec wants him to be able to go right back to bed after his client, so he’s doing the minimum required to let Magnus feel like himself. To let him be shielded when he feels like he’s crumbling inside.

And that minimum is eyeliner.

Alec slips closer between his legs, and Magnus leans down to let him reach, and Alec draws a strong line with the kohl along his eyelashes. It’s a declaration: _I’m okay_ , and a warning: _don’t mess with me_ , and Alec hopes it’ll keep Magnus protected when his heart and brain can’t do it.

It’s hard to keep his hand steady with Magnus so close, his warm breath on his cheeks, but he manages, and moves on to the other eye.

And out of nowhere, Magnus says, “I’m pretty good at falling apart, hm?” and Alec stills his hand to listen. “I’m pretty good at falling apart,” Magnus repeats. He sounds bitter and sad, and kind of hopeless. “But I haven’t really figured out how to put things back together again.”

Alec continues his work with the eyeliner, hoping to create a sense of calm, and says, “That’s okay. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at putting things back together. I’ll teach you. And you have to teach me how to fall apart, okay?”

It’s not just an idle comfort, he’s serious. About helping Magnus, and learning from him, too. Alec’s gotta figure out how to let himself fall apart sometimes or he’ll end up back on that bridge, he knows it.

But that’s for another time.

Magnus looks at him, wide-eyed, and then he lunges forward. Alec barely gets the eyeliner pencil out of the way fast enough to avoid smearing it across Magnus’s cheek, and then Magnus’s lips are on his and he’s kissing him, hard and fast like he won’t get to do it again.

Alec presses in between his legs to get closer, one hand braced on a strong thigh, the other wrapped around the back of Magnus’s neck as he drops the eyeliner he doesn’t even know where. They kiss, and Magnus seems to brighten a little, moving more freely against him, his lips twitching up into a smile.

They pull apart to catch their breath, and Alec looks at him, lit pink and red by the sunrise, the lines of his face happy and sad at once.

“You’re so beautiful,” he tells him, and Magnus actually blushes.

“We will have to do this again,” he says, grinning a little, “the makeup thing. Another time when I can properly appreciate the sheer sensuality of the experience.”

Alec laughs, and Magnus laughs too, finally, leaning his forehead against Alec’s, and they kiss lazily for a moment in the heat of the rising sun. 

Then the doorbell rings, and Magnus gets up, and Alec must release him from his arms to the harsh light, but it’s easier knowing that he’ll get him back. Maybe not every time, maybe not forever, but for now.

For now.

**Author's Note:**

> thinkin about that quote (from Queer Eye??) that’s like, “I don't care about cooking or household chores. I am saved by the fact that you exist.” 
> 
> i have this headcanon about this AU that it’s somewhat darker than the canon timeline. Not a lot, but like—the Clave is even stricter and more shitty, and as a result both Magnus and Alec’s lives have been made even harder than they were in canon. Hence why they’re even more fucked up! 
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](https://cuubism.tumblr.com/) ⭐


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